Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Frightened Turtles II

The debate over immigration and open
borders or open immigration continues.

A British correspondent argued with a
reader of Andrew Bernstein’s “Immigration
and the Welfare State” about the pros and cons of open borders or open
immigration, vis-à-vis Muslims and Mexicans.

The reader’s position on the matter is confusing, as he
seems to want it both ways: a total ban on all Muslim immigration into Western
countries, and a selective or discriminating ban on Muslims who advocate
violence to impose Islam on others or a whole country (in conformance with the official
Ayn Rand Institute position).

So he isn't clear on his own position at
all. He also contradicts himself when he says that Islam is both a criminal
organization and a religion. But a genuine criminal organization, such as the
Mafia or a drug cartel, is not moved by an ideology of any kind; these
organizations are merely opportunistic gangs taking advantage of irrational
laws. Islam, however, is a totalitarian ideology moved by the agenda of supremacy
over all other religions and political systems, even though it has little
ideational content, and little such content in its “jurisprudence,” Sharia law,
other than the “prophet’s” say-so or the pretzel-like logic of its judges.

The only thing he's right about is that the
Koran is a prescription for conquest
and committing criminal acts, criminal per Western concepts of individual and
civil rights, which Islamic spokesmen deny the validity of, because Islam
doesn't recognize individual rights or the civil liberties of Western nations.However, Muslims do avail themselves of them
to advance Islam; they have adopted Lenin’s assertion that capitalists will
hang themselves with the rope they sell to the Reds; it's much the same thing.

Frankly, I think the open borders
"faction" on this issue is guilty of a severe dropping of context.
This is not the early 20th century when hundreds of thousands of Jews and
Italians and other ethnic/religious groups immigrated to this country. The
overwhelming majority of them were not trying to impose Judaism or Catholicism
or the Mafia on everyone else. Their personal religious convictions were not a
threat to anyone else. True, some Jews and Italians who came here were
gangsters, or became gangsters. In many instances, when they were identified and
apprehended, they were either deported or imprisoned after a trial for their
crimes.

But Islam isn't the same thing. Jews and Italians did not pose a peril to
everyone else, native-born or not. Whether or not your average
Friday-go-to-prayers Muslim is active in propagating or proselytizing Islamic
doctrine or engages in criminal actions based on Islamic scripture, such as
terrorism, they're still culpable and indirectly responsible for the actions of
their more consistent brethren, who engage in violence per the diktats of the Koran. On that point, I agree with
Leonard Peikoff 100%. My policy would be: Either repudiate Islam altogether, or
leave for and/or return to a country where your ideology is implemented, but
you're not implementing it here.

I dismiss the assertions of those Muslims
who claim that Islam can be reformed in the same way Catholicism and
Protestantism were reformed, that is, by removing religion from a country's
politics. As I've written many times before, Islam can't be reformed without
killing it; Islam is based on the initiation of force and once that imperative
is removed from the religion (or the violent verses in the Koran “reinterpreted” beyond recognition), there's not much left to
it except perhaps a Masonic-like ritual or something resembling a fraternity of
the Knights of Pythias. (Or Ralph
Kramden’s Bensonhurst chapter of the International
Brotherhood of the Loyal Raccoons.)

All in all, one is still left in puzzlement
over Writeby's and the Brook faction's position on not banning or not removing
Muslims from the U.S. (or from Britain). And the context being dropped by them
and Writeby is that we are all living in countries that are far more statist
than they were in the early 20th century.

Moreover, I think it's somewhat futile to
be arguing over immigration rights when we're losing or have lost rights
wholesale in terms of personal income and consumer products and behavioral
policies imposed by the government and other non-immigration
issues. Others deny it, such as Bernstein, but our welfare state is a draw to Mexicans and Muslims (as is
Britain's). When the Jews and Italians and other European groups came here in
the early 20th century, there was no welfare state. When Cubans risked their
lives coming to this country, they weren't drawn to the welfare state which by
then actually existed, but by the chance to live their lives independently of
the state (Communist or not). One can't say that now about Muslim or Mexican
(or Central American) immigrants.

As for the Mexicans and other Latinos, I
think most of them come here for semi-ideological motives; our welfare state is
more generous and more efficient than the ones they left behind. They will naturally
vote Democratic out of gratitude or compulsion or manipulation (if they vote at
all), and, as I noted in my original column, help to perpetuate the death grip
the Democrats and other statists have on this country.

Granting that large numbers of Mexicans may
come here for employment; where, in an economy deliberately
tanked by Barack Obama, are they going to find it? In landscaping?

One
correspondent wondered whether or not there is a political correctness angle to
all this. As in not wanting to address the issue that the people who are
causing all the problems with immigration in the US and UK are those with brown
skins coming into a country with mainly white skins. Mr. Brook and other ARI spokesmen
don't usually pull their punches in regards to racial issues, like affirmative action,
reparations etc.But immigration itself
is a different matter; it's controversial. So our enemies could have fine old
time, if ARI argued for immigration controls, painting it as white men wanting
to keep out "darkies."

But even if this were the case, there
should be no capitulation to political correctness at all. As I remarked
elsewhere, we're in this mess because people have played our enemies game by
being cowards and not addressing issues for fear of being seen as
"racist" or “Islamophobic.” And the end result of this spinelessness
is, say, Rotherham and the Pakistani rape gangs in Britain, and, over here,
honor killings of girls and women, beheadings, “lone Muslim wolf” shootings at
Jews and other infidels, the Boston Marathon bombing, and “workplace violence”
committed by the likes of Major Nidal Hasan.

So if the unrestricted immigration by
Mexicans or “Chicanos” and Muslims is not
going to be in the national interest and is downright dangerous, then it needs
to be acknowledged and said. And the Objectivist credentials of anyone who is
deliberately pulling back on the issue or obfuscates it are at the very least questionable.

Further, none of the open immigration
advocates regard the Muslim and Mexican settlement in the U.S. or in the UK or
the Continent as an invasion and conquest by demographics; for the Muslims,
this is prescribed by the Muslim
Brotherhood. There isn’t a European country whose Muslim population is less
than ten percent of the overall population. But I doubt that any of them have
bothered to read the Brotherhood memorandum,
dated 1991, which I've often cited or linked in my past columns, or bother to
read the manifestos of the Mexican supremacists’ La Raza or the Aztlán
movement.

They seem to treat these phenomena as just
loopy outfits on the fringe the political spectrum. The Mexicans here in the
U.S. (or their spokesmen) are also on a "reconquest" effort, wanting
to "take back" all of California and much of the Southwest. The
racist element in the effort is pretty blatant, as strong and as virulent as it
is in Islam. As the ISIS jihadists want to erase the blue-eyed Yazidis as a
race (by raping their women), Mexican nationalists want to subjugate blue-eyed
gringos. But these facts are never addressed by Brook et al. They have their magic wands, you see.

My British correspondent noted:

Objectivism is NOT
some mystical, utopianist cure-all where there will be no evil or wrong-doing
in the world. Objectivism is not the magic wand of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,
which, waved over an issue, solves it automatically, irrespective of context.

The open borders
advocates seem to think: Well, there's
Objectivism, which runs along the lines of Adam Smith, that there is an
"invisible hand" of Objectivism that will somehow make Islam not the
murderous religion that it is when its adherents move to foreign countries.
They obviously know how murderous Islam is because the very same people who are
arguing for open borders and also arguing for a total war, and possible nuclear
war, with Islam! So why are they contradicting themselves?

This is why I won't engage the advocates of open borders or open immigration in
argument. Their terms are so vague and their public positions so untenable with
regard to their professed fealty to Objectivism it isn't worth my time to
engage them. They keep flip-flopping or just won't come out and say what they
really mean. There is a unfortunate strain of evasion in their positions. I
don't think any of them, including their legions of open borders supporters,
have delved into Islam, the Mexican issue, and Europe as deeply as I think they
should. They seem to think that Objectivism is
that magic wand, which, once it's waved over the issue, presto! There’s the
answer!

John
Stossel’s article, “Immigration
is American,” like some open border arguments, dwells on some important
points and also on irrelevancies. He does, however, point out the chief culprit
in the issue: the time it takes for prospective immigrants to be granted the
right to apply for citizenship, political asylum, and also for work visas and
residency, which is arbitrarily daunting and onerous. The requirements imposed
on prospective immigrants were once a product of the Immigration
and Naturalization Service, established in 1933 (another FDR legacy), and
governed by two things: politics, and the convenience of the INS bureaucracy.

The functions of the INS, after 9/11, came
under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security and its functions were
divided between three new bureaucracies: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and U.S. Customs and Border
Protection. Further, while restrictions on Chinese immigration have lapsed, for
example, the INS and its successor bureaucracies have instituted other racial
and ethnic quotas.

Stossel argues for less restrictive and less
onerous legal applications for citizenship and residency, and that’s fine. But,
again, he argues from the standpoint of ideal circumstances, in which we lived
in an ideally free country and not in the trough of statist controls and in a
continuous state of crisis, situations created by political pragmatism and
multiculturalism. As with other open border positions, this is surely another
argument of gossamer. To ignore these aspects is to indulge in wishful
thinking.

Americans
must first extricate themselves from the claws of statism before they can begin
to credibly address peripheral issues such as immigration. Otherwise, it’s a
matter of the dog chasing its own tail.

5 comments:

Anyone claiming to support open immigration of Muslims as "rights-respecting people" coming to America to partake of and support what is left of our freedoms need only observe the behavior of the participants in the latest "Muslim Day Parade" in New York City, and the absence of protest by allegedly "rights-respecting" "Muslim-American" citizens. The same phenomenon can be observed all over this country (and the West in general) whenever openly conquest-motivated Muslims demonstrate their intention to utterly subjugate the Infidel. Talk about "frightened turtles", hiding under their prayer rugs and wailing "Islamophobia!!" in answer to any challenge, hoping the kafir won't get wise and rise up before the triumph of Islam is complete.

Since when does someone outside of America have a "right" to have his natural inalienable rights protected by the American system? That is an optional matter whereby America may or may not choose to impose sensible immigration limitations.

No criminals, no contagion and no sedition. Yes, some immigrants will lie, but dealing with them must be the same as dealing with domestic crime and sedition. Of course, that means a police and court system that ignores victimless crime and goes after criminals with genuine victims! It means a system willing to arrest and try an imam preaching death to America, not for hate speech but for inciting violence to Americans or for the removal of the Constitution, etc.

Richard: Amen to all you say. One point I might have made in my two Turtle columns is that the abolition of drug laws would deflate the power and influence of the drug cartels. Before the government demonized drugs, there was no drug problem. You could buy the stuff openly, over the counter, and it was your business if the stuff hurt you. If you committed a crime while "under the influence," you were charged with that crime, and for "possession," as well. The U.S. learned nothing from Prohibition, and isn't about to learn, either. It has a vested interest in the "War on Drugs."

Posted for Grant Jones, who can't log into the comments here, and who left this same comment on CapMag: I'll give "writeby" credit, at least he is willing to argue for his position. Note that most of the "Official" Objectivists will only discuss this issue in forums that they completely control. They either ignore or block all dissenting views. In a word, they're cowards.